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Welcome to Jan’s weight loss blog. Here you will find a collection of new ideas, weight loss hints, reflections, musings and thoughts.

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Unless you have been living under a rock for the past couple of years, you would have been hearing a lot about how our addiction to sugar is affecting our health and that we need to be on a sugar free diet. Our sugar addiction is causing an obesity epidemic, with the resulting problem of metabolic syndrome and its symptoms of high blood pressure, high cholesterol, insulin resistance and abdominal obesity leading to cardiovascular disease, heart attacks and strokes. Now long term studies have revealed just why sugar is so addictive. They also link excessive consumption to some forms of cancer and confirm that consuming high fructose corn syrup leads to the symptoms of metabolic syndrome and its resultant health problems.

What exactly do I mean by “sugar free diet”?

Before I go any further, I should explain that by a sugar free diet I mean that you can have sweet treats occasionally but not every day. You should be free of sugar addiction and sugar cravings and you can stop eating sugar when you want to. I consider my own diet to be a sugar free diet, but I do have the occasional sweet treat and I love nothing more than trying out a new dessert recipe for a family function.

The evidence for a sugar free diet

The information in today’s post comes from a 60 Minutes video posted on 1 April by CBS News. Thank you to Cheryl from bodyslimdown.com who left the link on a previous comment. It is only 14 minutes long and well worth watching if you need further convincing to quit sugar. If you don’t want to watch the video there is a summary of the video below.

Dr Lustig who was featured in a previous article on high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), is one of the strongest advocates for eating a sugar free diet, and more specifically fructose which is the sugar found in fruit. He has spoken out in no uncertain terms about HFCS which is a sweet sugar substitute commonly used in processed foods, particularly in the U.S. Since the 1970s, the amount of sugar eaten in the U.S. has actually fallen by 40%, but this has been replaced by consumption of HFCS. He says that sugar and more specifically fructose (fruit sugar) could be the driving force behind some of the biggest killers; obesity, type II diabetes, hypertension and heart disease and that 75% of these deaths could be prevented with proper diet.

Dr Lustig claims that sugar as well as fructose is toxic. They are both sweet and irresistible to the human palate, causing us to consume them in great quantities to the detriment of our health. With sugar hidden in so many foods today, it can be difficult to stay on a sugar free diet. Some foods are obviously sweet such as sugar, honey, syrup, sweetened drinks and desserts, but there are many foods that are not so obvious such as yogurts, bread, “savoury” sauces, and even peanut butter! I used to work in a health food shop where we made fresh peanut butter by putting fresh peanuts through a grinder. Why on earth do you need to add sugar to such a delicious, simple and nutritious food?

Why nature is against a sugar free diet

In evolutionary terms we are not wired for a sugar free diet, there are no sweet foods in nature that contain fructose that are poisonous to man, so the sweet taste of food signals to us that the food is good and safe to eat. Sweet native foods would also have been much denser in nutrients than they are now and highly regarded for survival and also a great treat in a basically sugar free diet. But instead of the small amount that we used to get naturally from fruits full of fibre to help slow down absorption, people in the U.S. now manage to eat 130 pounds (59 kilograms) every year. That’s 1/3 of a pound (150 grams) every single day or approximately 30 teaspoons of sugar.

Why you should consider a sugar free diet

Eric Stice, a neuroscientist at the Oregon Research Institute has used MRI to scan thousands of brains, to find out how our brain responds to sweet foods. His research clearly demonstrates that sugar stimulates the brain in the same way that cocaine does. When sugar is eaten, it targets the reward centres of the brain and stimulates it to release dopamine (the feel-good hormone), which is exactly the same way that drugs and alcohol stimulate the brain.

Stice discovered that when you eat sugar on a regular basis, you build up a tolerance to it much as you do with drugs and alcohol. If you overeat on a regular basis, over a period of time, it changes your brain by blunting the reward region’s response to food so that you need to eat more to achieve the same satisfaction. The more you eat, the less you feel the reward so the more you need to eat, making it a very addictive substance.

More compelling reasons to consider a sugar free diet

Dr Kimber Stanhope, a nutritional biologist at the University of California completed a rigorous 5 year study researching the link between HFCS and the high risk factors for cardiovascular disease and stroke. She found that when the volunteers drank too much sugar in the form of HFCS, the liver became overwhelmed by the fructose and processed some of it into small, dense LDL (the bad cholesterol). The LDL is then small enough to lodge in blood vessels causing plaque and heart attacks. Symptoms developed in as little as two weeks. Because of her research, Dr Stanhope now chooses to eat a basically sugar free diet.

Researcher Lewis Cantley, director of the Cancer Center at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center at Harvard Medical School was also convinced to change to a sugar free diet, when he discovered that one third of cancers have insulin receptors. If you overindulge in sugar it causes a spike in your insulin levels and can become the catalyst to fuel common cancers such as breast and colon cancer. The insulin binds to receptors on the cancer signalling the tumour to grow which in turn takes glucose out of the blood stream to help it grow.

Just keep in mind, following a sugar free diet, does not mean that you have to be a wowser, sitting back nobly at the office party or the family get togethers refusing to let a morsel of sugar touch your lips; and believe me, that’s not so hard to do once you have kicked a sugar addiction. I consider a sugar free diet to be one where you eat fresh wholesome foods every day and sweet or sugary foods are eaten as occasional treats.

If you need some practical help to quit sugar and start living a sugar free diet, Sarah Wilson’s I Quit Sugar ebook is a simple, easy to follow 8-week program that takes you step by step through the process of quitting sugar. Also available for Kindle.

Do you have a story about quitting sugar to embark on a sugar free diet?

Further reading

Why I changed to a sugar free diet

Do we need to stop eating fruit to quit sugar?

Walk to cut your chocolate consumption in half

Sugar free diet recipes

If you have chosen walking for weight loss as your exercise, then a pedometer is a great way to track your progress. I was going to write about another topic this week, but John from Tinnitus Remedies left a comment on my Walking for weight loss – move it or lose it post asking how long it takes to get 10,000 steps a day. John also commented that he works from home so spends a lot of time on his computer which means a sedentary lifestyle and a tendency towards weight gain (I hear ya on this one!). My advice is to get a pedometer, it’s a great way to track how many steps you have taken in a day and it is keeps you motivated.

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The best time to exercise has been hotly debated for many years now, so if you have ever wondered if there is a best time to exercise, then this post is for you. Any time of day has its pros and cons, but I have always maintained that you should exercise when you feel like it and when you can – it’s better to exercise at any time of the day rather than miss the “best time to exercise” because you are too tired or too busy.

When is the best time to exercise for you?

It doesn’t matter what time of the day or night it is, your body burns calories at the same rate. So if your best time to exercise is the morning, that’s when you should do it, if your best time of day to work out is afternoon, then that’s when you should be working out. Read the rest of this entry

Walking for weight loss is a great way to lose weight as well as maintain weight, so I decided to write this post as there is a lot of debate about which exercise is the best for losing weight. One of the techniques used by diet scams and weight loss supplements is to promise weight loss without doing any exercise. My leader at Weight Watchers told us once that if we just stuck to the plan and did no exercise at all we would still lose weight so it’s true! However, we all know that we need to exercise for general good health and wellbeing, and walking is a great exercise for weight loss.

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I was not going to do an Easter post geared towards help for the chocoholic. As a reformed chocoholic myself who managed to quit sugar some time ago – but not give it up entirely – Easter no longer holds any fear for me. So when I recieved a comment from one of my readers who has had a fabulous weight loss so far, bemoaning the fact that she would more than likely have a chocolate binge over Easter I decided to do a post on the topic of our emotional relationship with our favorite treat foods and explain how mine has changed over the past few years. I used to be a chocoholic who ate a family bar of chocolate every day, but living proof that you can beat chocolate cravings and stop sugar addiction.

Psychology of a chocoholic

My reader’s comment really resonated with me, because when I was a chocoholic, that’s just how I used to think about treat foods and not just chocolate. Before I joined Weight Watchers, food was the enemy, it was me against food, sugar and chocolate and I was a one woman resistance army. Treat foods were there to be resisted. We all know that to lose weight you need to cut back and stop eating junk food (yes that does include chocolate), but that can be extremely difficult if you are a chocoholic with constant sugar or chocolate cravings.

Changing your chocoholic thinking

So how do you deal with it? One of the most important things that happened for me at Weight Watchers, is that I finally changed my unhealthy emotional relationship with food that had developed over a 34 year period of yo-yo dieting. We were taught how to incorporate treats into an every day healthy eating plan and if you are allowed to eat something it takes all that stress away. The self-talk of “can’t have it”, “shouldn’t have it”, “I’ll never lose weight”, “I’m so weak”, “I’ve broken my diet”, “I’ll never lose weight” etc, etc, etc becomes irrelevant. You can have it, you can still lose weight, you haven’t broken your diet, you are not weak, you deserve a treat – see how the self-talk changes? Even a chocoholic or sugar addict can learn how to have a healthy relationship with treats and how to incorporate treats into an everyday diet, without feeling guilty.

At Weight Watchers we were taught that if you want to have a treat, you either cut back somewhere else or do a bit more exercise. But even if that is not possible, it’s OK. If you go to a wedding where you can’t control what your meal will be, enjoy it and get back to your healthy eating plan tomorrow.

Special occasions for the chocoholic

One of the most important things that a Weight Watchers leader ever said to me was just before Christmas and we were talking about how to cope with all the goodies that are around. She said it’s not what you eat on one day of the year that makes a difference. For me that was a light bulb moment – I realized that you can have the occasional day off day, so long as you have a healthy eating plan for most days of the year. What she said liberated me. She told us that on Christmas day, she just eats what she wants and if you have ever given yourself that permission without feeling guilty about it, you will know how much more you will enjoy your food and treats. When you are eating without guilt you don’t have to binge, because hey, you can do this again some time and you don’t feel guilty. You don’t get into that spiral of negative self-talk that inevitably leads to even more over-eating.

So this Easter, don’t have a chocoholic pig-out. Give yourself permission to have a chocolate treat (or a few treats), enjoy your Easter bun, enjoy your chocolate egg or bunny, do a bit of extra walking or make sure that you do a bit more incidental exercise, then after Easter, get back to your usual healthy eating plan.

Once you change your thinking about food and treats, you too will change your emotional relationship with food and your chocoholic addiction will become a thing of the past.

Have you been able to overcome a chocoholic or sugar addiction?

Further reading:

Three things I learned at Weight Watchers

Stop your chocoholic sugar addiction with I Quit Sugar

Should we really be on a sugar free diet?

I came across some research on weight loss supplements recently and thought it would make an interesting post for those of you who have either tried weight loss supplements or are thinking about using them. As I mentioned in my post last week How to spot a diet scam, I have had first hand experience with weight loss supplements because I used to work in a health food shop. The owners very generously allowed us to buy our supplements at just above wholesale prices, so I ended up trying quite a few. None of them worked, not a single one. I tried ones that blocked fat absorption, ones that blocked carbohydrate absorption and ones that were supposed to suppress your appetite. Most of the weight loss supplements that I tried 20 years ago no longer exist, but every year a whole new range of magical supplements from the fruit of the rainforests is introduced.

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How to spot a diet scam

Diet scams – they’re everywhere. I don’t know about you, but every time I open up the Sunday paper, pick up a women’s magazine at the hairdressers (I never buy them myself), or watch the commercial TV channels there will be the newest, latest and greatest lose weight fast scheme – especially if you watch late night TV.

Anatomy of a diet scam

The scenario of the latest diet scam usually involves photographs of some extremely buffed up men and women with the before and after pictures, and requires you to be spending a lot of money on very expensive diet patches, creams or supplements. I have to admit, in desperation, I have been sucked in myself and once bought some very expensive diet scam supplements. Back then you could buy a weeks worth of fruit and vegetables for the cost of that supplement so they were very expensive. What the supplement did was control my cravings with the chromium picolonate, but that’s about all. It didn’t magically make fat melt away from my body and I certainly didn’t end up all trim and buff. The supplement came with a very low calorie diet, and guess what? If you stick to a very low calorie diet, you will lose weight – even without the expensive supplements.

The way that these diet scam schemes gain some “credibility” is that people will use the product, stick to the diet and lose weight. But instead of recognising that they lost weight because of the diet, they think that the patches, creams or supplements did something magical. And excuse me for being cynical, but those amazing before and after shots from fat and flabby to buffed and toned, hmmm, I’m thinking Photoshop might possibly have been utilised here.

The best way to lose weight is to cut back, eat real food and increase your physical activity, with a view to losing 1-2 pounds (1 kg) per week. Look out for these diet scam promises.

Diet scam promise #1: Lose weight without diet or exercise

Common sense tells us that if we continue to eat whatever we like and live like couch potatoes, there is no way that our weight is going to change, except maybe in an upward spiral. For things to change, things have to change. If it sounds to good to be true … then usually it is, I would even go so far as to say it is too good to be true. The only thing that you are going to lose here is your money.

Diet scam promise #2: Never diet again because your weight loss will be permanent

I came to the horrible conclusion some time ago, that I am always going to have to watch my weight. I lost 12 kilograms with Weight Watchers and to date (3 years later) have kept off 8 kilograms – the other 4 seem to be kind of determined not to lose their best buddy. I enjoy life, I eat well, I enjoy treats, but I can’t eat whatever I want to day in day out without putting some weight back on. I got a little slack, indulged in some stress eating and that’s how the 4 kilograms crept back.

To lose weight permanently, you have to make permanent lifestyle changes and for me one of the biggest changes is that I don’t go back for seconds anymore. That makes a big difference to my daily intake. Only a diet scam promises you that you will never have to diet again. I can tell you from my own experience though, the closer I am to my goal weight, the longer it takes me to start putting weight back on

Diet Scam promise #3: Eat as much as you like of your favorite food and still lose weight

I would love to think that I could eat my favorite sweets every day (The Natural Confectionery Co. Tropical Bliss). I love the orange flavour of these jelly lollies with their soft centres. They are even more delicious if you put them in the fridge because the outside jelly goes a little bit harder and contrasts even more with the soft centre. But no, I cannot eat a bag of these lollies every day and expect to lose weight, or even maintain my weight. Apart from that, being a former sugar addict and having fought a long hard battle to stop sugar addiction, I don’t want to backslide again with all of the accompanying health problems. Read about my own battle with sugar addiction.

If you are looking at a possible diet scam and your favorite food happens to be lollies, cakes, biscuits, chips, pies or McDonalds hamburgers, give it a big miss.

Diet Scam promise #4: Lose 10 pounds in 10 days

Most of us will have a time in our life when we desperately need to weight for a special event. I remember going on a starvation diet one Christmas because I had left it too late to try to lose weight before I went on holiday – it was possibly the most miserable Christmas that I have ever had.

Only a diet scam will promise such a ludicrous weight loss and it can usually only be achieved if you are extremely overweight and basically starve yourself. Sad to say, losing weight this way can be very detrimental to your health and will never be maintained. Usually people who lose weight this way put it all back on as soon as they stop the “diet” plus a bit more. You can only lose this much weight with extreme deprivation and eventually, your will have a “brain snap” and want to gorge and binge to make up for it.

I haven’t ever tried a The diets that I promote because they are sensible, safe and sustainable are Weight Watchers, The Diet Solution and The Jon Gabriel Method. You can click on the links to read more about them.

Next week I am going to be writing specifically about diet supplements. I worked in a health food shop for six months and have tried most of them so I have first hand experience. I will tell you if the research matches my experiences.

Further reading:

The diet scam of weight loss supplements

Tell me about your favorite diet scam

I don’t know about you, but as the years have progressed, my job has become more and more sedentary until now I spend the entire day at my computer. Luckily for me I have a great boss who will let me hand deliver internal mail or go for a short walk to get the blood flowing again. But what about people in call centers who are tied to their desks and others who don’t have cool bosses?

Sitting and type 2 diabetes

Associate Professor David Dunstan, from the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute lead a study of drivers, office workers and call center staff to look at the effect of sitting for long periods. The study was published online in Diabetes Care, a publication of the American Diabetes Association and demonstrated that short activity breaks every 30 minutes can dramatically improve your health and reduce your chances of developing type 2 diabetes.

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Insulin and weight gain is probably something that most of us never think about, as we tend to think of insulin only as the hormone that controls our blood sugar levels. However, as the authors of Sugar Busters! say, insulin is the maestro, the conductor and the chief CEO of metabolism.

How does insulin control your blood sugar levels?

Insulin is produced by a small organ called the pancreas that sits just behind your stomach. As soon as you start to think about food, your body starts producing insulin in preparation. If you eat carbohydrates (fruit, vegetables, pasta, potato, rice, bread, sugar, cakes, biscuits) your pancreas starts to produce more insulin. As the carbohydrates are digested and broken down into glucose, which is the simplest form of sugar that can be used by your cells, more insulin is produced. Insulin then starts to move the glucose into your cells so that it can be used for energy or stored. Insulin also moves fat and protein into your cells. Excess glucose is also stored in the liver in the form of triglycerides (fat).

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